See Gabrielle’s photo, links to her bio, and Part 1 of this Q&A. See Part 2 of this Q&A and Part 3 of this Q&A.

Q&A with Gabrielle Dolan (Question 4):

Q: Based on an article you authored in The Age, Dave Snowden criticized a quote from you, suggesting that you and your partner are involved in manipulation. You somewhat cleared the air, but Snowden still had the last word. Would you care to further clear the air and differentiate what your firm does from manipulation?

A: Dave made that comment not knowing what we really do, and we did clear the air privately. Dave’s concern, and why he used the word manipulation, was that business leaders already have enough power, so they should not also be given the power of storytelling. This comment is based on the assumption that all business leaders are evil, which is of course not the case.

The work we do with leaders is to literally give them very practical skills to help them better communicate. So it may be getting everyone in the organisation to fully understand the values or getting people engaged and excited about the new strategy or just simple getting your messages across at the next presentation in a way people understand, remember and can retell.

We absolutely realise the power of story and in all our dealings with client we emphasise a few things very strongly. Firstly, all your stories need to be true. Not just factually true but authentically true. To leave out critical details or to tell untrue or fabricated stories is wrong, immoral and simply not worth the discredit to your professional reputation if you do so. Secondly, we warn clients about the danger in using a story as a form of marketing spin. For example, we had a client who wanted us to help construct a story around an upcoming decision to offshore its operations. They knew it would not be received well at all and that their people had a real moral objection to the off-shoring of work. Most of the leadership team also had this same moral objection. Our advice was to not use a story; they were attempting marketing spin, and even the best story in this situation would still be marketing spin. That is manipulation and we would strongly recommend against that because it is wrong and because it just won’t work.